Wolverine & The X-men #17 Review

“If you think this is ridiculous, just wait’ll you see what happens on the inside.”

Wolverine & The X-Men #17

Written by Jason Aaron

Art by Michael Allred

Colors by Laura Allred

Review by Joey Braccino

Lots of things happen in this issue of Wolverine & The X-Men, but don’t worry your pretty little head about it.

All you need to worry about is that #17 features Doop, the wonderfully fantastic pop-artwork of Michael (and Laura!) Allred, Jason Aaron’s best, most irreverent humor, and Howard the FREAKING Duck. Oh yeah, and it has NOTHING TO DO with Avengers Vs. X-Men.

Seriously. In this issue, we finally learn what Doop—the bizarre, floating, green, alien X-Man (formerly X-Statix)—has been doing at the Jean Grey School. We’ve seen him behind the front desk or otherwise floating around aimlessly in the background in previous issues, but issue #17 gives us an in-depth look at Doop’s actual responsibilities at the school. These responsibilities include [SORT OF SPOILERS]: napping, attacking Nazis, warding off alien robot invasions, and playing roller derby, and much much more. Yeah. For real.

Mike Allred returns to the character he co-created with Peter Milligan back during X-Force/X-Statix, and let’s hope that no one else ever draws Doop-centric stories. The Allreds’ pop-art stylings are perfectly suited to Doop’s absurd activities. The extremities to which Doop goes in this single issue—insanely graphic violence to gross-out vomiting to quiet dinners with a certain hirsute supervillain—are brilliantly captured with the Allreds’ solid coloring and strong inking.

Verdict

Buy it. Even if you don’t read Wolverine & The X-Men or any X-Men books or comic books in general. Even if you can’t read at all. Just buy it. And read it. Or look at the pictures. And laugh all the way home.

About The Author

Joey Braccino took his BA in English and turned it into an Ed.M. in English Education. Currently, he brings comics back in a big way all day every day to public education. In addition to proselytizing the good word of comics to this nation’s under-aged citizenry, Joey is a firm believer in the academic and literary merits of cultural media more broadly—particularly film, radio, pop journalism, and social media. #Excelsior!

One Response

I must admit, at first i was a bit unsure about Allred’s art as I’ve been enjoying Chris Bachalo’s (which actually took me a while to warm up to) so much. But when it dawned on me that this was a Doop-centric issue, Allred’s art suddenly felt like putting on comfy slippers. In other words, its just perfect for this kinda comedic timeout issue – which Aaron is superb at delivering.
The flashback sequence illustrating how difficult it was for Logan to convince Doop to come on board the Jean Grey School bandwagon is comedy gold, particularly the last ‘cyclops’ scene. Doop’s persuasive techniques to convince the county school board not to close the Jean Grey School, had me howling.
This is a beautiful little issue and whilst i wouldn’t want Allred on pencil duties in a heavier hitting storyline, but as he co-created this little green blob, both his pencils and Ms Allred’s colours are perfect for this kind of one and done humorous issue.

It’s strange to see one cover with speech bubbles on it, but along with Captain Marvel this week, this makes two. I might be thinking out loud too much here though
Anyway, let me finish by saying…Doop for President !